


Life, or Something Like It

by Atacama



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: M/M, POV First Person, Post-Season/Series 05, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-13
Updated: 2015-02-13
Packaged: 2018-03-12 03:07:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3341270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atacama/pseuds/Atacama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post series finale, Justin makes his way back to Brian Kinney</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life, or Something Like It

**Author's Note:**

> Re-posting of some very old fic (circa 2007) from LJ to AO3. Sorry to spam and I apologise in advance for the errors of a younger writer.
> 
> Nostalgia... God you're a bitch. Why can't I delete you. My first ever Fan Fiction, written almost exactly 8 years ago, in February 2007. This is in the first person!!! It has very long sentences! Too many... Ellipsis! and no commas! There are no warnings for those things, I apologise.

You know those words that you can easily place within a sentence, or when you're reading, even though you technically don’t know the precise definition of the word you can still understand it in context, but if someone asked you what it meant, alone - the precise definition of ‘…………’ you wouldn’t know what it was?

At times that’s exactly how I feel. As if I'm only defined by everything around me. What I've done, or haven't done, who I've done, or haven't done, or do on a regular basis, who my friends are, who I know, where I live. Everyone systematically defines me by my life’s experiences… yet when I think about them I can't understand how those things have the ability to define who I actually am, by myself, just me. 

Sadly, there’s no dictionary to help me with that… I have no idea what my definition is when I have no sentence around me and I'm alone.

So this inevitably leads to Brian… though to be honest most of my thoughts do tend to end up tangled up somewhere near his general vicinity, in my head (if my brain were to be divided up, with each portion designated to a specific event or person that effected me during my life it would go something like 50% Brian – 50% everything and everyone else) Brian is my sentence, my paragraph, he’s co-author of my fucking book but I still need to know who I am, what I'm capable of alone, without having this huge comfortable, safety net that tends to just take over everything, hold my hand throughout, and leave me standing, not without some scars but still impeccably on the other side.

Sometimes I think that’s what Ethan was about. Me, trying to exist without Brian… but even that was somehow totally orchestrated by him. He practically gave me to him, gift wrapped with a very messy bow. I don’t deny that it wasn’t good for me to some extent. I learnt that in essence words are just letters strung together and it’s the intent behind the saying of them that makes them mean anything.

Even though I'd never have admitted it at the time I was still a child and I was still under the impression that love was this perfect and easily defined package with blinking lights that flashed on automatically so that you could recognise it when it deigned to cross your path. Ethan was my fucking package, but once unwrapped no matter how pretty the paper was, the content was for shit. Gaudy, over embellished, comfortable and with an easily understood ‘to recipient’ ‘from sender’ card with a pretty message in between that could be copied and pasted on numerous cards, for anyone, for every occasion.

Brian is not comfortable and I have definitely never heard the word easy in conjecture with him… unless sex is involved and then well… easy is kind of an understatement… not that I'm complaining… Jesus am I definitely not complaining. But I digress. Brian is not easy or comfortable, he’s not a whole bunch of things… but what he is, is mine… Through a lot of pain and a fuck load of heartache he is mine and I'm honestly not being conceited, but I don’t think he will ever belong to anyone else. My leaving will never destroy him, he doesn’t depend on me to live, but he loves me in this huge fucking sacrificial way and he will forever.

When Brian asked me to marry him it was for all the wrong reasons and I said yes for all the wrong reasons. He asked me to marry him to make me happy, I said yes to make me happy. I said yes and it was a fucking selfish thing to do. Because marriage – the ceremony and what people naturally assume from the label are a huge fucking trap for Brian and if you think about it, marriage stopped being about two people joining together in love, for better or worse, richer or poorer a long time ago. It's about showing other people that you’re making this huge fucking sacrifice to love this person no matter how much they fuck up. Now I’m not saying that’s not just bitchy with a whole lot of exaggerating but you catch my drift? It's about the other people, the ceremony the flowers, the food, the suit, the dress (or other suit), it's about showing off… or it would have been.

I love him and want to spend the rest of my life with him. Marriage is icing, but I don’t need it. I will love him and want to spend the rest of my life with him regardless. But a little bit of me wanted everyone to know that he was doing this huge fucking thing for me. To publicly declare his undying love for me, with wedding photos as proof that I'd finally officially caught the stud of Liberty Avenue, tamed him. And people would have come and they would have envied me my big catch and pitied Brian his big sacrifice. It wouldn’t have been about love. And I realised I didn’t want to tame him. To me Brian is fucking perfect, imperfections and all. And truly Brian married me a long fucking time ago. We’ve been better, we’ve been worse, we’ve been richer, and we’ve been poorer, in sickness and health and we’re still together. There are a whole bunch of married heteros' that can't lay claim to that, come to think of it there’s a whole bunch of unmarried married Lesbos' and Homos' who can't either.

So, I’m in New York trying to make something of myself and I know that Brian and I have different opinions of what it is to “make it”. He’s probably expecting me to show up in 10 years time with a whole bunch of cash in the bank and a name that, when mentioned in art circles, is the cause of some spontaneous orgasms and with several long term, romantic relationships and a whole lot of non-Brian sexual experiences under my belt … and he expects me to expect him to welcome me with open arms. At the moment he’s probably hating me cause he thinks, that I think he’s waiting for me and will wait for me forever. But what’s probably really pissing him off is that he knows that he is and he will.

What I think I need to “make it” is a whole bunch of loud, angry, crazy, scary, I'm young, this is a life experience New York city paintings. A whole other bunch of fucking Christ I miss Brian paintings that reassure me that no matter how far away or how long it’s been since I've seen him I can still paint every inch of his body by memory, paintings. I need to sell enough of them to get an agent and pay for my own studio (I don’t need to actually pay for my own studio just know that if I had to, I could). I also need to be able to paint from wherever I happen to be and I know that where I want to be is wherever Brian is cause I know now that I can live without Brian I also know that I really don’t want to live without Brian.

So I got all that I needed to get out of New York and I'm going home. I know he’ll try not to let me ‘cause he’ll think I'm quitting or still sacrificing what he thinks is my dream and destiny, but what is actually just his version of “making it” so that I can be with him.

And I know that I'm so getting what I want this time. I haven't told anyone I'm coming back because I know they’ll expect me to want to see them immediately and I just don’t want to. It's not that I don’t love them it's that he hasn’t touched me in six fucking months and I haven't touched him or smelt him or tasted him and Jesus… I just need…

I also know that I'm gonna have a fuck load of unbelievable fucking orgasms in the next 4 days cause he is taking a sick day on Monday and I want to re-remember his taste, his sweat and come, and love, and the unbelievable pleasure that only he can give me. And I know we’ll have desperate, rough, angry sex followed by soft, forgive me sex followed by Brian torturing me for hours and hours and making me shiver and pant with want and need, making me delirious and making me drown in him… just him and marking me and making me his again and again…

And I know that I've found my definition and that a huge part of it is about Brian and that’s okay. Because loving him is a huge part of me. It makes me a better person just knowing that he’s watching me expecting amazing things but that he’ll still love me no matter what.

And I know that knowing and having done all this won't make things easier ‘cause Brian will always be the hardest thing I do and I know that he will also always be the most worthwhile.

And I know he won’t say that he loves me everyday but I know that he tells me he does every second.

And I know… that I need to find my keys…


End file.
